Rex and Hannah Chronicles Story No 22: Eve Of Samhain
by Tim66
Summary: On Halloween of 2010, Rex and Hannah must aid a desperate spirit, who has possessed Phoebe Halliwell, to find her murderer.


DISCLAIMER: This story is based upon the series, Charmed, that was created by Constance M. Burge. All Charmed characters are the property of Spelling Productions.

**THE PLACE: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA**

**THE TIME: OCTOBER 31, 2010**

The kitchen of Rex Buckland and Hannah Webster's apartment was alive with activity as the two former Warlocks placed down bags of candy. "Excellent." Rex said. "I think we have more than enough Halloween candy for the trick-or-treaters."

"I hope so." Hannah replied. "I would hate to leave any child disappointed. I love Halloween, and I believe it's something that should be enjoyed by all."

"Well no need to worry about that." Rex said. "We have plenty." Suddenly, a knock was heard at the door and Rex answered it. Standing there was Phoebe Halliwell. "Phoebe, what brings you by?" Rex asked.

"Well, Coop is still stuck in Paris, a young couple he's working on. Is it okay if I hang out here for a while?"

"Sure, we don't mind." Rex said. "Where might your sisters be, if you don't mind me asking."

"Paige and Henry are in Hawaii on a two week vacation. Lucky them." Phoebe replied. "As for Piper and Leo, they're on a weekend getaway to Palm Springs with the boys. Kira is watching the Manor for them and no doubt Cole's there. Given the history between me and him, I'd rather not go there myself."

"I thought you'd forgiven Cole." Rex said.

"I have." Phoebe replied. "Still, me being there when he's with his current girl friend, Kira, might make it awkward."

"Yes, I suppose it would."

"So can I hang here?" Phoebe asked again.

"As Rex said, we don't mind. You can help me carve the pumpkin." Hannah added.

"Okay, sounds like fun." Phoebe said.

About half an hour later, the phone rang and Rex answered it. "Hello? Oh, sure, I can come in. I'll be there in ten minutes."

"What is it?" Hannah asked.

"Oh, just something that's come up at the university." Rex replied.

"On a Sunday!?"

"Yeah, go figure." Rex said, shrugging his shoulders. "I'll be back later."

Soon after Rex had left, Hannah found Phoebe in the living room, fiddling with a Ouija Board. "Phoebe, what are you doing with that?"

"I found it in Rex's study." Phoebe replied. "I thought that since it's Halloween, I'd see if I could contact anyone."

"I don't know if it's safe." Hannah said. "I'm not the expert Rex is, but I think the barriers between our world and the spirit world are weaker on Halloween."

"Hannah, come on, after all we've faced. The Source, Zankou, the Triad. I think we can handle a mere spirit, should one deem to show up. Besides, it's not like I'm some rank amateur. I'm one of the Charmed Ones, after all."

"Okay, Phoebe, I guess you're right." Hannah said after a second, although she couldn't keep the uncertainty out of her voice. "Just be careful. Okay?"

"Got it." Phoebe replied with a grin. She watched as Hannah left the room, and then began to push the pointer around. "I call upon any spirit who wishes to communicate on this Eve of Samhain. Come to me, let me hear you." Suddenly the pointer began to vibrate loudly, jerking this way and that across the board. _Whoa, this is really getting out of hand._ Phoebe thought to herself. She opened her mouth to call Hannah. However, before she had a chance to call out, she felt something swiftly enter her body and everything went black.

Hannah was in the kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee, when she heard a loud crash come from the living room. "Phoebe!" she called. "Are you okay?" There was no answer. Quickly, Hannah ran into the living room and saw Phoebe lying on the floor, not moving. "Phoebe!" Hannah yelled and ran to her friend's side. With relief, Hannah saw that Phoebe was still breathing. She began to gently slap Phoebe's cheeks. "Phoebe, wake up! Wake up!" Phoebe moaned and opened her eyes. "Thanks goodness." Hannah said. "I knew I shouldn't have let you fool with that Ouija Board..." she trailed off as Phoebe slowly got to her feet and looked around. "Phoebe, are you all right?" Hannah asked with concern.

"Who is this... Phoebe?" Phoebe asked with puzzlement in her voice.

_Oh no, don't tell me she's lost her memory! _Hannah thought.

"It worked." Phoebe said, after having walked over to a nearby mirror. "It actually worked." She looked at herself some more and continued. "Not bad, in fact it slightly resembles my original body."

"Phoebe, what are you talking about?" Hannah asked slowly. "What's going on?"

"Oh, I get it." Phoebe said to Hannah. "The one you know as Phoebe must be the original owner of this body. Well as of now, Phoebe is not here. You could say she is sleeping, and will continue to do so as long as I am here. My name is Sarah Jane McRitchie and I need your help."

Soon after, Rex while still at Stanford, got a call from Hannah. "Rex, you better get home now. We have a big problem here!"

"I'll be right there!" Rex replied and hung up. _What on Earth is going on? Everything seemed okay when I left. _he thought as he quickly left the university.

When Rex arrived home, Hannah brought him up to speed on what had happened. They went over to where Phoebe, or rather Sarah Jane, was sitting. Rex confronted Sarah Jane, asking. "Okay, who are you and what have you done with our friend, Phoebe Halliwell?"

"As I said to the one called Hannah, my name is Sarah Jane McRitchie." Sarah Jane replied. "I haven't done anything with Phoebe. She is merely asleep. Once I leave, she'll wake up and it will be as if nothing ever happened."

"So you're not out to possess Phoebe for good?" Hannah asked.

"No, I'm just borrowing her for awhile. I need her body, and your help, to solve a murder."

"Murder?" Rex asked. "What murder? Whose?"

"Mine." Sarah Jane replied. "On Halloween, fifty-seven years ago, I was brutally murdered by the man I was supposed to marry."

"I see." Rex said slowly.

"I don't get it." Hannah said after a few seconds. "If you were so determined to solve your own murder, why didn't you just possess somebody and do it a long time ago?"

"It doesn't work that way, Hannah." Rex said. "Good spirits can't just take somebody over, like evil spirits can. They can only do it if somebody opens the door for them, like Phoebe did with the Ouija Board."

"Kind of like the way the spirit of Christy Jenkins got out of Purgatory last year." Hannah said. "I remember you saying that could have happened if someone was fooling around with a Ouija Board at the time." Hannah remembered the incident in which the now remorseful spirit of Christy Jenkins had come to Rex and Hannah, seeking their help in locating her sister, Billie, in which she hoped to reconcile with. Thanks to some legwork and some help from Paige Matthews, Billie had been found, and Christy had gotten her hoped for reconciliation. After which, Christy, finally at peace, moved on to the Spirit World.

"Yes, exactly. The Ouija Board allowed a door to be opened, in which Christy Jenkins came through." Rex replied. "Mind you, Miss Jenkins decided to approach us directly, rather than possess someone, but the situation is otherwise the same. Also, this is the one time of the year in which the barriers between the world of the living and the Spirit World are weaker. Combine both those aspects, and a spirit can come through, like Sarah Jane did."

"That's true." Sarah Jane said. "All I want is to see justice served, nothing more." She looked at Rex and Hannah with pleading eyes.

"Well I guess we'll do what we can." Rex said slowly. "What is the name of the man who murdered you?"

"Mark Poole, and he was twenty-two at the time."

"So that would make him seventy-nine now." Hannah said, doing the math. "I guess he's still alive, Sarah Jane would probably know if he had died."

"Okay, let's see what we can find out." Rex said. "Perhaps we can find something on the Internet."

Shortly after, the three of them were in Rex's study, and watched as Rex surfed the Net. "Perhaps there is something in the old newspaper files." Rex said. Before long, he had found something. "This looks interesting." He moved aside and showed Hannah and Sarah Jane the old newspaper story he had discovered.

_LOCAL WOMAN MISSING, PRESUMED DROWNED_

_November 1, 1953_

_This Halloween took a tragic turn for the McRitchie family of Oakland this year. Their only child, a daughter named Sarah Jane, went missing while on a boating trip with her fiancé_

_Mark Poole, last night. In a statement to police, Mr. Poole claimed that Miss McRitchie lost her footing and fell into the water. Although he dived in to try and save her, he was unable to and as of yet, her body has not been recovered._

"That's an all out lie." Sarah Jane growled continued. "The truth was that I was going to break off the engagement. Mark had a drinking problem and would get very violent. He used to beat me, and one day I decided I just couldn't take it anymore. When we were out on that boat, I told him the truth, that it was over. He wouldn't accept it, saying that he would change, but I knew he never would. When he realized that my mind was made up, he made his choice. He took one of the oars and hit me over the head, knocking me out. Then he threw me into the water where, unconscious and helpless, I drowned, and my body was swept out to sea. When my spirit left my body, I followed him home, but I couldn't really do anything about it. Finally I did go to the Spirit World, but I have never forgotten what happened that awful night. Mark must be found and punished for what he did to me." Tears were now spilling out of Sarah Jane's (Phoebe's) eyes.

"Don't worry, Sarah Jane, we will find him. I promise you that." Hannah said as she gently took Sarah Jane's hand.

"Indeed we will, but there might be a snag." Rex said. "Sarah Jane was listing as missing, presumed drowned, so that means the body was never found. That means even if we find Mark, we are going to have a hard time proving his guilt."

"I wonder if the police questioned him further." Hannah wondered.

"Only one way to find out." Rex said.

At the police station, Daryl Morris was busily, going through his papers. Since his return to San Francisco a year ago, Daryl had been happy. The East Coast was fine, but he loved his home town most of all, especially since the Charmed Ones had told him not to worry about Demons for a good long time. He looked up when Rex came into the office. "Rex." Daryl said. "Can I help you with something?"

"Yes, you can." Rex replied and laid out the situation for Daryl. "This involves a mysterious drowning that happened on October 31, 1953. I was wondering if you could get the files for us. The spirit of the drowning has come and asked Hannah and myself for help to solve said drowning, which in fact, was a murder."

"Supernatural stuff is still going on, I see." Daryl said, shaking his head. "I thought we were done with all that. Didn't the Halliwells say that we wouldn't be dealing with Demonic stuff for a couple of decades or so?"

"Well, the Underworld is in chaos right now, so you don't have to worry about Demons." Rex replied. "However, other supernatural events like this will crop up from time to time. Such as this case."

"I guess they will." Daryl said. "Just get the files back to us when you're finished with them, although not tonight. I plan to take my kids trick-or-treating when I get home."

"No problem." Rex said.

Hannah and Sarah Jane were waiting in the living room, when Rex arrived home with the files. Soon all three were going through them. "I found something!" Hannah suddenly announced and held up a file, which she then read aloud to Sarah Jane. "Well it seems your parents were not convinced of Mark's story. They filed charges against him and he was arrested. However, due to lack of evidence, the charges were soon dropped." She looked at the anguish on Sarah Jane's face. "I'm sorry."

"My parents." Sarah Jane said with sadness. "All those years of not knowing what happened to me." she looked at Rex and Hannah. "It was only when they themselves died and crossed over that I was able to tell them."

"At least they finally found out." Hannah said.

"I know." Sarah Jane replied. Suddenly an idea struck her. "Phoebe's powers, just exactly how do they work."

"Well usually Phoebe has to touch a person or an object and she then has visions." Rex replied. "She sees the future, the past, and sometimes she can even find somebody. Why do you ask?"

"Because I have a story to tell." Sarah Jane said. "It happened like this..."

**FLASHBACK. SPRING OF 1953**

Sarah Jane McRitchie looked on as her fiancé, Mark Poole, dug a small hole at the base of an oak tree. The two of them had taken this day for an outing in the country, Mark was being well behaved today, usually that was the case when he was sober. _Why do I stay with him?_ Sarah Jane thought to herself. _Why? _

"There." Mark said as he finished digging the hole. As Sarah Jane watched, he placed his class ring into it. "Now give me yours." he said to her.

"Why?" Sarah Jane asked.

"Well we are going to get married soon, so let's just do this for fun." Mark replied. "We'll bury our class rings here. In say, twenty years, we'll come back and dig them up again." Sarah Jane thought the idea was silly, but went along with it anyway. She took her ring off and watched as Mark buried it, along with his own, in a small tin box.

**FLASHBACK ENDS**

As Sarah Jane finished her story, Rex clued into what she was getting at. "So you think that maybe if we dig up the rings, Phoebe's power might work?"

"It's worth a try." Sarah Jane replied.

One hour later, the three of them arrived in the country. "Now where is that tree?" Sarah Jane asked. They quickly hunted around and eventually they found the tree in question. "I just hope no one else has dug the rings up." Sarah Jane said as they began to dig. Soon they found the tin box, Sarah Jane stared sadly at it, at what might have been. "Let's get this over with." she said and opened the box. The two rings were there and Sarah Jane picked up Mark's.

"Now just clear your mind and see what happens." Rex said with encouragement in his voice. Sarah Jane did just that. At first, nothing happened, but then Phoebe's powers did kick in and Sarah Jane had a vision of the past.

_It was near the end of November, 1953, Mark Poole was driving along a country road. He was drunk, the guilt at what he had done to Sarah Jane was eating away at him, slowly, but surely. Alcohol __had become his only friend, it blurred the guilt and the pain. Suddenly Mark came out of his stupor only to see he had left the road and was heading right for a tree. It was too late to do anything and he crashed into it..._

"I know where Mark is." Sarah Jane said slowly, after the vision had ended. Following Sarah Jane's directions, Rex drove them to a nursing home on the outskirts of San Francisco. Once they arrived, they asked the head nurse for Mark Poole. The nurse directed them to his room and soon the three of them were staring at an elderly man lying on a bed, all kinds of tubes are hooked into his body. "I saw it happen in the vision." Sarah Jane explained. "It seems Mark was consumed by guilt over what he did to me and started drinking even harder. About a month after he murdered me, he was driving while drunk and crashed his car into a tree. This is the result, he's a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down. He's been existing like this for more than fifty years now."

"Should we call the police now?" Hannah asked.

"No." Sarah Jane replied. "I think fate has punished him more than the legal system ever could."

"I agree." Rex said. "Come on, let's go and leave this poor wretch in peace."

One they had returned to Rex and Hannah's apartment, Sarah Jane was ready to head back to the Spirit World. "I want to thank you two for your help." she said to Rex and Hannah. "You have helped my parents, and me, find some kind of closure after fifty-seven years. Please tell Phoebe that I am sorry for the inconvenience."

"We'll do that." Rex said.

"I am curious about something." Hannah said. "Sarah Jane, how did you even know about me and Rex?"

"You've made some friends in the Spirit World, spirits you helped find peace and cross over. A girl, a member of a family you helped cross over, came to me. She saw I was in distress and told me how you helped her and her family find peace."

"Interesting. What was her name?" Rex asked.

"Anastasia." Sarah Jane replied. "She said that you two were the ones to find if I could get back to the world of the living. So when Phoebe used the Ouija Board to open the door, I took my chance."

"Anastasia. I remember her." Hannah said.

"Of course, the Romanov Family." Rex replied. It had just been a little over a year since he and Hannah had encountered the Earthbound spirits of the last Russian Czar and his family, brutally murdered in 1918, and had helped them find peace and cross over. "I hope they're doing well in the Spirit World."

"They are." Sarah Jane said. "They asked me to send you their fondest regards, and once again thank you for helping them find peace."

"It was our pleasure to help them." Rex replied and Hannah nodded in agreement.

"Well, here I go." Sarah Jane said. As Rex and Hannah watched, what seemed to be a misty human outline form left Phoebe's body and disappeared. Phoebe collapsed to the floor. Hannah quickly knelt down and revived her.

"Rex? Hannah? What happened?" the confused Phoebe asked. "What am I doing on the floor?"

"It's a long story, Phoebe." Hannah replied and filled Phoebe in.

"Whoa! I missed a lot." Phoebe said.

"Missed what?" Phoebe husband, Coop, said as he appeared.

"Coop! You're back!" Phoebe said as she ran over and hugged her husband.

"Yeah, I finally got that couple sorted out." Coop replied. "So, what happened here?"

"I'll tell you later." Phoebe said.

"Want to tell me in Paris?"

"Paris!?"

"Well, it is the city of romance, and that is my occupation, after all." Coop said.

"What are we waiting for." Phoebe said and then turned to Rex and Hannah. "I hope you two don't mind."

"Of course we don't." Hannah replied. "You two go and have fun in Paris."

"We well, see you later." Phoebe said and then she and Coop faded away, bound for Paris.

"I hope they have fun." Hannah said. Seconds later, the doorbell rang. "Looks like the first trick-or-treaters are here." She went to the door and answered it. Sure enough, a group of children were there, all dressed in various costumes.

"Trick-or-treat!" all the children chanted.

"Well, let the Halloween festivities commence." Rex said with a smile.

**HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!**


End file.
